Samsung B7610 Omnia Pro

[GTFO. kk20]

My new phone has arrived and looking spiffy. 3.2" AMOLED screen (resistive), allegedly 1Gig storage (more on that later), 800Mhz cpu

Got it on orange with 500mb internet for £25 a month (18 months phone was 'free') special deal from buymobilephones.net. Cashback too from quidco £25 so factor that in for anothe £1.40 off over 18 months makes a bargain.

The first thing you notice is the screen. It looks massive and shiney. Not too shiney though - it seemed to be fine outside in the sun (better than my older omnia). The back of the phone has a sort of odd effect that shimmers too. The pullout keyboard has 4 rows, full qwerty although the numbers are "shifted" to the top row. Feels heavy but isnt too large overall a third larger than the omnia.

Connection is mini USB and there is a 3.5mm headphone socket (that doubles as the TVOUT socket too). This is a massive improvement on the original omnia as now you can charge the phone AND have headphones/TVOUT at the same time. TVout works the same as the omnia - not fantastic as it is only composite but good enough to use in a hotel (mainly where I used my previous phones TVOUT). Since I have coreplayer installed I can play just about any movie file (short of HD)

Camera is the same 5MP as the old omnia although now you can record in HD (720p) which is a bonus. Call quality is the same although the internal speaker is louder. Speaking of which, there are now two speakers, one on the top and one underneath although they dont seem to act in stereo.

Came with WM 6.5 although I have flashed it to WM6.5.5 for better battery life and a few tweaks. Installed TomTom and a few apps, the GPS seems to be quicker at getting a lock. Seems quick enough "doing things" and speedy enough in opera (and I.E). The box and all the reviews have said that this has 1gig storage with some of it partitioned off for the device to use. I think this has been updated along the way as I have 1444mb free on the storage and 200mb on the main system (with the rest being ringfenced in a hidden partition I guess) so I have more memory to play with internally. I have also supplemented this with a 2gig micro SD on which I will be storing all the photos and video.

Overall quite happy and a worthy replacement for the i900 (of which will be up for sale soon).

[GTFO. kk20]

Today I thought about getting it unlocked so that I can swap between my tmobile and orange sim. All the attempts failed which was pissing me off. Until I actually *checked* to see if it was already unlocked. It was. Bloody brilliant! Thats another +1 for www.buymobilephones.net ! I did think it was slightly odd that there was no corporate branding on the phone - my i900 does have TMobile on the facia. This one has nothing.